Must read! Jack Cafferty earlier today on the Situation Room!

Please, it is all worth reading!!!!

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/01/sitroom.01.html

Jack Cafferty, we keep saying it gets worse every single day. And it's clearly worse today than yesterday.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, and the thing that's most glaring in all of this is that the conditions continue to deteriorate for the people who are victims in this are and the efforts to do something about it don't seem to be anywhere in sight.

I want to read you something, Wolf. This is a quote from an editorial: "A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource. The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months following 9/11, has vanished." Now that's not from some liberal rag. That is an editorial from one of the most conservative newspapers in the country, New Hampshire's "Union Leader."

"The New York Times," not unexpectedly, kind of chimed in. They said the President showed up a day later than he was needed, and they excoriated him for appearing casual to the point of carelessness. Harsh words coming from FEMA's former Disaster Response Chief Eric Tolbert who says the government was not ready and shifted its attention from natural disasters to fighting the war on terror.

The questions that we ask on THE SITUATION ROOM every afternoon, Wolf, are posted on the website two or three hours before we go on the air. And people who read the website often begin to respond before the show actually starts. The questions this hour is how would you rate the response of the federal government to Hurricane Katrina? I got to tell you something. We got 5 or 600 letters, before the show even went on the air. No one, no one says the federal government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far reaching and calamitous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I'm 62. I don't remember -- I remember the riots in Watts. I remember the earthquake in San Francisco. I remember a lot of things.

I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people that are in that Superdome down there? I mean what is going -- this is Thursday. This is Thursday. This storm happened five days ago. It's a disgrace. And don't think the world isn't watching. This is the government the taxpayers are paying for, and it's fallen right flat on its face, as far as I can see, in the way it's handled this thing.

We're going to talk about something else before the show is over, too, and that's the big elephant in the room. The race and economic class of most of the victims, which the media hasn't discussed much at all, but we will a bit later -- Wolf.

snip

Jack Cafferty, you're watching all of this unfold, and our viewers are as well, Jack. What are they saying?

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we asked a bit of a loaded question earlier this hour, Wolf, when we said how would you rate the response to the federal government to Hurricane Katrina. We had a ton of mail. I think there's close to 3500 letters came in, in maybe 15 or 20 minutes.

Here's a sampling. Penny in Renton, Washington, "I sit here in Seattle wishing like hell I could do anything besides give money and send prayers to help those poor souls. This is not my America. This is not my government. I'm ashamed of this administration beyond any shame I have ever felt before. I hope the people of this country can pull together in spite of government ineptitude to help wherever necessary."

This one is signed Disgusted in El Paso, Texas, "there's no National Guard presence on the Gulf Coast, because they're all in Iraq. We can invade a country on the other side of the world, but we can't drop bottled water from a helicopter on a street in New Orleans."

Delores in Mt. Ephraim, New Jersey, "get the talking heads off the TV. How many times do we need to hear what they're doing. Pictures show clearly what they're not doing."

John in Carmel, Indiana, "I think the government is handling the program in a remarkable fashion. Calling back Congress is a brilliant move by the president. What I don't like is the negativism from the media. Maybe they should volunteer to go help with the clean up instead of being so critical."

And Howell in Conway, Arkansas, "Bush and his minions have probably never been in the poorer parts of any American city. It's the greatest failure of the American political system that those with the greatest needs are the least likely to get it."

And a lot about calling Congress back. Wolf, you remember when they ordered the feeding tube disconnected from Terri Schiavo? Congress returned to Washington on a Sunday night in order a pass some sort of a piece of legislation that was calling on them to reconnect the feeding tube. In a matter of hours, they came back on holiday. This hurricane happened on Monday, they may show up in Washington tomorrow, Friday, to work on a resolution to appropriate some money for these people in New Orleans. I guess it's all about what's important to you, isn't it?

BLITZER: Jack, thanks very much. We're going to check back with you. You've got another question coming up in the next hour, and the next hour is beginning right now.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/01/sitroom.02.html


Let's bring in our Jack Cafferty. He's in New York.

Jack, you know, it's pretty startling -- because I remember when Hurricane Katrina, last Thursday, exactly a week ago, when it hit south Florida, the Ft. Lauderdale area and Miami, we saw some of the flooding -- it was then a Category 1. And there was some serious flooding in south Florida -- we don't want to belittle that, by any means -- about 75 miles-an-hour.

But within minutes after leaving south Florida, on this program we heard Max Mayfield and Ed Rappaport of the National Hurricane Center. This hurricane was going to pick up speed as it goes over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and they immediately began pointing towards New Orleans -- this is on Friday and Saturday -- saying, You know, it could make a direct hit on New Orleans. And it picked up, became a Category 5 with winds about 150 miles-an-hour, slowed down a little bit by the time it hit Monday morning, a Category 4 with winds of about 140 miles-an-hour. But as you and I know, there have been articles in scientific publications and in newspapers for many years suggesting that the levees, the systems, the flood walls in New Orleans were simply not capable of surviving anything more than a Category 3 hurricane.

So, to say that this should have been a huge surprise to a lot of individuals is to ignore a lot of scientific literature that said exactly this: this is the worst case, that it could happen.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: It could happen. And with a couple of days' notice, as you suggested, it was taking shape and drawing a bead on the city, and we knew it was coming. And yet, the poorest and the neediest and the most helpless of those in New Orleans, well, they're still there, aren't they? Despite the many angles of this tragedy -- and lord knows there've been a lot of them in New Orleans -- there is a great big elephant in the living room that the media seems content to ignore.

That would be until now. Slate.com's Jack Schafer wrote today in his column that television coverage has shied away from talking about race and class. Schafer says that we in the media are ignoring the fact that almost all of the victims in New Orleans are black and poor. And he's right. Almost every person we've seen, from the families stranded on their rooftops waiting to be rescued, to the looters, to the people holed up in the Superdome, are black and poor.

Many of them didn't follow the evacuation orders because they didn't have the means to get out of town. They just couldn't do it. A lot of them are sick, a lot of them don't have cars, a lot of them just didn't have the means to leave "The Big Easy." And they're still there.

So here's the question: What role have race and class played in the Gulf Coast crisis? You tell us. CaffertyFile -- one word -- CNN.com.

Wolf, we got something like 7500 letters in the first hour of the program today. I thought we got a lot yesterday -- we got about 6000 letters over the course of the three hours yesterday. Seventy-five hundred e-mails poured in in the first hour.

One of them suggested I could be tied up in IRS audits for years after the things I said about the federal government in the first hour.

BLITZER: That's all right. You have nothing to hide, Jack.

CAFFERTY: Okay, Wolf.

Kinda sums up the root cause of the problems, doesn't it?

of FEMA head Brown when he said these people should have left New Orleans before Katrina. These are poor, carless people... how were they to go? I was angry on Saturday and Sunday when I saw they weren't bringing in buses to evacuate the people before the storm hit.

It's nice to know once in a while they tell the truth.

...then his statement: "I guess it's all about what's important to you, isn't it?"

Brilliant. To think...I used to DIVE FOR THE FUCKING REMOTE when this guy/talking head/professional curmudgeon came on; now I'm a fan.

he is a hero in my eyes.

Arch conservatives can be so sharp when they realize that their heros are full of shit.

bit for the transcript to be posted. This would be an excellent attachment for anyone to send to their legislators when trying to make their points about how Katrina is being handled. I'm going to do just that in a little while.

And from Wolf? I'm double impressed.

Nominated for greatest page.